| Prairie
Dog Management Plan Update
The park has finally completed a Draft Black-tailed Prairie Dog
Management Plan / Environmental Assessment. The plan presents four
alternatives including the No Action Alternative and three alternatives
of differing ranges of prairie dog acreages from 300-1,000, 1,000-3,000,
and 3,000-5,000 acres. Please take the time to read the plan and
provide comments as appropriate. The document is available online
at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/wica. The public comment period closes
on March 10. Comments will be accepted during this period and should
be addressed to the Superintendent; Wind Cave National Park; 26611
US Highway 385; Hot Springs, SD 57747 or electronically at the National
Park Service planning website http://parkplanning.nps.gov/wica.
There will be an informal open house at the Wind Cave National Park
Visitor Center on Thursday, February 16, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. to
discuss the plan with park staff and to comment on the alternatives.
Elk Monitoring Project
Elk Capture near Boland Ridge.
The park conducted another elk capture and radio-collaring project
during the last full week of January 2006. Another 53 elk were radio-collared
Leading Edge Aviation from Clarkston, Washington. These animals,
along with another 10 from last years capture, are being monitored
by Duane Weber to make sure they are alive and moving. The GPS unit
in each collar collects and stores location data while a separate
vhf signal allows Duane to track each animal and make sure the collars
are still working and the animal is alive. Data is being retrieved
from collars worn by animals tracked in 2005 and preliminary locations
are revealing some interesting movement patterns. This project marks
the beginning of the second year of a three to four year study on
elk distribution and movement in and around Wind Cave National Park.
History
Revealed
Survey work in Wind Cave continues to uncover additional facts about
historical activities that occurred within Wind Cave but are not
well documented in park records. Recently, while on a survey trip
to the UEA area (located next to the Escape Stairs), we found a
pencil inscription on the wall that read, “Radiators installed
8-18-35”. We had already known that the Park had done extensive
modifications of a room 50 feet to the east of that inscription
sometime around 1935. We could see that they had excavated seventy
feet of passage to a depth of 6-10 feet and built a 45-foot long
rock retaining wall. That work was done in preparation for installing
radiators for cooling the power plant, which generated electricity
for the new elevator. Because of this inscription, we now know the
radiators were installed on August 18, 1935, which was a few months
after the excavation of the elevator shaft and two months before
the Otis Elevator Company finished installing the new elevator.
The coolant system was composed of a 2” pipe that ran down
the elevator shaft and out to the “Isolation Room”,
where hot water ran through 2,300 feet of coiled pipes and was cooled
before being pumped out of the cave and back to the Power House
(currently the VIP Center). The only remnants remaining today are
the extensive excavations, blasting, and rock walls in the Isolation
Room. The pipes were removed from the cave in the spring of 1953
during a “cavern cleanup job”, after power lines from
Hot Spring started supplying electricity to the Park.
Radiator installation graffiti found in Wind Cave.
Comments and
feedback about Resource Ramblings are encouraged and can be made
to Dan Foster, in person, or via email.
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Wind Cave National Park Resource Management News Briefs
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